While I've only been here for a couple of months, I have found abi to be populated with tons of nice, knowledgeable folks, all willing to lend a hand or an ear.

A ton of great info here and on the abi site

Always nice to see another non-lemming, Apple free human!

cheers and have fun here...
-lestatar

hi lestatar

actually, I ain't so fruit-free - I have an iTouch and I love it (but I just use it for YouTube), but, other than that, I'm a total Sony geek. I've been pestering their Facebook page because, like many of us, I'm dying to get my hands on a A847!!!!

While the obvious onus is on the user to make sure their music library is properly tagged, the benefit in this case is overwhelming incentive to shape things up and get organized...

tres cool feature...wish I had it on my device...

Of course, one COULD make playlists with stuff by year then use shuffle, but then you kinda lose that element of on-device randomness...

cheers,
-lestatar

True it is a bit of work to get the years tagged correctly, but it's worth the effort. I have a number of compilation albums where the year for each song is the year the compilation was released. I've been going through them and changing it to the date each song was originally released.

I also have a few special cases. For example:

- In 2003 "Jim Croce Home Recordings Americana" was released, a collection of songs Jim Croce recorded in his kitchen in 1967 (this includes classics like "In The Jailhouse Now," "Mama Tried," and "Six Days On The Road"). In this case I changed the year to 1967 for all of the songs, rather than 2003 (the year they were released).

- In 1999 The Carpenters released an album called "Interpretations" which featured songs recorded by The Carpenters that were not written or co-written by Richard Carpenter. One of the songs is "Trying To Get The Feeling Again" (the original version of the song later a hit for Barry Manilow) which was recorded in 1975 and lost for 16 years. Like with the previous album, I chose to use the year it was recorded rather than the year it was released.

That's interesting. Personally, I have always been in a bit of a quandry when it comes to multi-year compilation albums or best of type cds.

I am extremely anal when it comes to tagging my music [as most "serious" collectors probably are - because a little legwork at the start is always better than trying to fix/tag a huge collection later], and I have tried to be consistent. But I have found so far that I have been predominantly using the physical cd release year instead of the original year of the tracks themselves. I think I just got in the habit of doing it this way and now, may be starting to rethink this, in large part because of your post.

I also am a bit fan of the COMMENT section of the id3 metatags. I guess I could indicate the release year of the collection in the comment field and then go back and retag the individual tracks by their specific years.

Of course, the problem is now that I have over 13K mp3, this could be a big project.

But your way is much more accurate and more useful from a year-shuffle-play perspective...

actually, I ain't so fruit-free - I have an iTouch and I love it (but I just use it for YouTube), but, other than that, I'm a total Sony geek. I've been pestering their Facebook page because, like many of us, I'm dying to get my hands on a A847!!!!

@ACJimbo: LOL! Well, nobody's perfect!

Yeah, Sony's PDPs, despite some [relatively] serious shortcomings sound fantastic and are generally among the best bang for the buck players, especially when you factor in fit/finish and battery life...

Regarding genres, I went the easy way and label everything either "music" or "audiobook." That way I can shuffle just the music without worrying about playing an audiobook chapter that I haven't listened to yet. I listed to certain "genres" of music depending on my mood, and my mood can change depending on what genre I'm listening too.

That's interesting. Personally, I have always been in a bit of a quandry when it comes to multi-year compilation albums or best of type cds.

I am extremely anal when it comes to tagging my music [as most "serious" collectors probably are - because a little legwork at the start is always better than trying to fix/tag a huge collection later], and I have tried to be consistent. But I have found so far that I have been predominantly using the physical cd release year instead of the original year of the tracks themselves. I think I just got in the habit of doing it this way and now, may be starting to rethink this, in large part because of your post.

I also am a bit fan of the COMMENT section of the id3 metatags. I guess I could indicate the release year of the collection in the comment field and then go back and retag the individual tracks by their specific years.

Of course, the problem is now that I have over 13K mp3, this could be a big project.

But your way is much more accurate and more useful from a year-shuffle-play perspective...

Thanks a heap pal!

cheers,
-lestatar

You are welcome. As I've been working with my music collection I've become more obsessive with my ID3 tagging, wanting to get it just right. To make best use of my efforts, I've focused mostly on the tracks loaded on my player, while working with the other tracks as time allows. It is worth the effort since it makes autoplaylist generation much more useful.

When it comes to the Comment tag, I tend to use it only for information that isn't appropriate for some other tag, including the custom tags. An example: I wanted to be able to separate music tracks from non-music tracks so I renamed one of the custom tags "Music" and put "Yes" or "No" in that tag. This allows me to listen to only music when I choose. In a related way, rather than using the Comment tag you could rename one of the custom tags "CD Year" and use that to record the year the CD itself was released.

Huh, great idea...I have not really messed around too much with the non-standard id3 tags. I supposed I could do as you suggest and maybe have the best of both worlds...

I have always stuck with the primary tags:
- track name
- artist
- album
- year
- track number
- genre
- comment [to include relevant info about the artist/cd, e.g. band lineups, wikipedia background info, etc.]

Need to see if MediaMonkey and Winamp will support mp3 library sorting by custom/user tags...Will check this out soonish...

Thanks for the tip! [Least you could do for making me re-think my nearly perfect tagging protocol... ]

cheers,
-lestatar

I checked in MediaMonkey (MM) and you can display and sort the tracks by a custom tag (which might be a standard tag but one that you can change the display name in MM). MM also has an item in properties called "Original Date" (which is separate from "Date") that you could use for the date the CD was released.

One of the main reasons I chose to use the original date for songs is to avoid jarring changes in music when I shuffle by keeping music from the same era together regardless of when the CD itself was released. Hearing Buddy Holly & The Crickets tracks pop up with music from 1985 (because that was when the CD I have was released) would feel wrong. It is the same with the Beatles' songs from the album "1" (released in 2000), and Elvis Presley songs from the album "Elv1s" (released in 2002).

Mostly classical, then the entire Beatles and Massive Attack collection, then some cheesy japanese giant robot anime music (which actually shines with the Phonaks) and then some pop (Most of them on either 320 kbps or VBR)

Thanks for playing on this thread! Some interesting info - nice to get a little handle on what other folks are using gear-wise and also kinda cool to get an idea on what folks listen to...

Still trying to understand what "audiophile pop" is though - can the poster please define this if you are still reading?

On a personal note, I have a small equipment change:

I just got my hands on the highly rated Maximo iMetal 590 IEMs. All I can say is WOW...

No doubt in my mind that these are amazing IEMs. Excellent specs, unbelievably generous accessories, great design and fit and they are among the most neutrally balanced, sonically defined headphones I have used in a long time.

These iMetal 590s would be worth it at nearly triple the price but are an absolute steal IMO at USD$39.00 from Amazon...

The soundstage is near perfect and definition of sounds is terrific to me.

If you want bass heavy phones, maybe these are not for you. But that is not to say these are NOT capable of excellent bass - they are but the bass is firm and responsive, not muddy or overwhelming from a flat EQ source. But if you need/want earth-shaking hip-hop type bass, you might be better off with SkullCandy's or the Dr. Dre/Monster Cable headphones.

If you want a solid, balanced set of quality IEMs, definitely check out these iMetals! Read the reviews to get a better idea...

My once trustworthy [and overall decent sounding CX300] are being repurposed as my home/knock around IEMs...